Auctioneers

You’ve heard of a pain in the arse? Well here’s an arse in the pane! This would-be burglar was caught in the act as he tried to break into the London offices of coin dealers and auctioneers A.H. Baldwin.

PICTURES of dogs are big business as Bonhams’ & Doyle’s sale of Dogs in Art in New York on February 11 highlighted. And an artist frequently featured in these New York sales brought James Adam (15% buyer’s premium) of Dublin success on March 12.

Signed by Hillary and other members of the 1953 Everest expedition (though not by Tensing, whose right to be known as the true conqueror of the mountain is still being fervently pressed by his compatriots), a deluxe copy of Alfred Gregory’s The Picture of Everest, illustrated with 42 full-colour reproductions of photographs and here specially bound in vellum, sold at $1200 (£750) in a special Himalayas section of a February 13 travel sale held by Swanns.

SOTHEBY’S have registered a 12 per cent rise in turnover on the fourth quarter of last year, but net losses for the year have climbed considerably thanks to extraordinary costs. Three quarters of these costs relate to anti-trust settlements.

The Europa saleroom at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) was packed to capacity for their film poster sale on March 4. It was standing room only for the international mix of collectors and dealers who had turned out to secure one of the 280 lots of posters promoting the attractions of various Westerns, horror and science fiction, James Bond, film noir and other vintage and not-so-vintage movies from around the world.

Top price in the latest round of ceramics sales in London was the £22,000 paid at Christie’s King Street rooms on February 24 for this 9in (23cm) wide mid-17th century delft posset pot.

The market for early dated Delftware showed its claws at the Shrewsbury salerooms of Halls on March 7, where this 5in (13cm) tall tin-glazed earthenware cat jug from 1677 was auctioned with expectations of £20,000-25,000. Spotted by auctioneer Jeremy Lamond hiding behind a much-admired Royal Crown Derby saucer (worth £20-30) on the mantelpiece of a Warwickshire home, the chipped and fritted feline was added to a select group of a dozen jugs, nine of which are dated.

An advertisement in the Antiques Trade Gazette has brought to light a remarkable coincidence – that the two paintings illustrated here, clearly depicting the same subject, are both to be auctioned on the same day by two different auctioneers at opposite ends of the country.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s have each agreed to pay $20m (£13m) to clients who bought and sold antiques at auctions held outside America.

“Is it 19th century?” a London dealer inquired of this unusual famille verte vase illustrated right which had been consigned to Woolley & Wallis’s sale with its partner, the more classical, yen yen vase, far right.

The little underglaze blue decorated cream pails or piggins made by Lund’s Bristol around 1750 are very rare specimens of English porcelain. Only six examples are known to exist, three of them now in museums, so West Country auctioneers Bearne’s were very pleased to offer this 23/4in (7cm) wide example, which they discovered in a local, private Devon house during a routine insurance valuation.

ON LEARNING that first edition copies of her first two Harry Potter books were to to be sold at Woolley & Wallis’February 12 auction to benefit Action Aid and Children in Need, author J.K. Rowling agreed to add her signature to both books and donated a signed copy of the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Unseen hoards of silver like this don’t appear on the market very often, so it is little wonder that the UK trade were out in force when it came under the hammer at Christie’s Amsterdam’s (23.2% buyer’s premium) Dutch and foreign silver sale on March 4. The wealth of silver came to light when part of a cellar wall collapsed during the demolition of a house on Breitenstrasse in Bad-Hersfeld, Germany in February 1967.

Specialist sales of Irish material are so few and far between that they are worth enumerating. The celebrated Lockett collec-tion was sold at Glendinings in 1956 and Whytes of Dublin held a landmark sale in April 2000.

FAMILY deaths and property downsizings still account for the majority of goods sold at auction, but lifestyle options are increasingly a factor. At Andrew Hartley’s sale the decision by a local vendor to part with her Chiparus figure to pay for an extension on her new home was almost as cutting edge as the Yorkshire man who ditched this collection of modern glass, some shown left, by Lancashire master blower John Ditchfield to pay for a holiday in the Far East.

This 19th century George Jones majolica game pie dish and cover led the way at Lawrences (11% buyer’s premium) three-day event, held at their rooms in Bletchingley between February 4 and 6.

The doom and gloom experienced in many provincial rooms prior to Christmas was nowhere to be seen in these Sussex rooms, who, despite the snowy conditions, took a respectable hammer total just shy of £170,000.

LAST month, 14 notebooks containing the gruesome diaries of Anatole Deibler, France’s last public executioner, were sold in Paris at Beaussant-Lefèvre (17.94% buyer’s premium) for €85,000 (£55,600).

Christie’s have announced two appointments to their tribal art department as they refocus their international programme of sales in this field. Tim Teuten, formerly head of Christie’s tribal art in New York and London, but more recently an independent consultant to the auctioneers, is to head the department. It will be based in Paris where he will oversee the organisation of sales and hold auctions twice a year.

Film poster vendor adds to exclusivity of sale by destroying second copy: COLLECTORS have reacted with outrage and disbelief to a statement from the vendors of an apparently unique film poster that a second copy had been deliberately destroyed to protect the sale’s exclusivity.